Ukraine Has Not Yet Died

If I could be anywhere writing about anything, right now, I'd be lost in Kiev. I used to read about certain countries in Europe after they threw bananas at some black soccer player, and say to myself, "I'll never go there." But I am a little older now, and I am more confirmed in the fact of this one-shot life. And knowing that this is not a dress rehearsal, and knowing, too, that questions are burning in me, and feeling that my whole purpose here is to observe, I simply don't much care anymore. I am past the age where one can afford to sit around waiting for the world to autoliberate from its various hatreds. And I have had my hatreds too. Like most humans.

I began this blue period thinking mostly of justice for my people. And having explored that subject, I came to wonder how other societies handled their national crimes. And so we've spent the past few months thinking of some of the most horrifying wrongs of the 20th century, and in those wrongs I have seen so much of myself. It is an odd thing to be raised black, to be raised by the dictates of white supremacy prevention, and then turn around and see yourself in people lighter than you. I feel deeply ignorant writing that. But it's true. The Ukrainian national anthem translates as "Ukraine Has Not Yet Died," and I have some sense of what that means.* But then I kind of don't. Analogy can sometimes obscure as much as it clarifies. Someday I hope to know more.

At any rate, here is a great piece by Tim Judah in the New York Review of Books. If you haven't been following the news, it's a good primer. But it also gets to one of the most trenchant questions, for me, to come out of this whole journey--what, precisely, do Europeans mean when they say Europe:

Before Yanukovych decided against the deal with the EU, Tetiana Sylina, a journalist highly critical of the government, told me that unless the EU signed the deal, with or without the release of Tymoshenko, it would “lose Ukraine.” Not signing, she said, would lead to increasing authoritarianism resembling Russia’s. “Yanukovych,” she said,

is not interested in the EU or the customs union or European values, he just wants cheaper credits and foreign investment and the opening of markets for oligarchs. But for Ukrainians, Europe is not about Yanukovych but about its 46 million people.

In this respect, she echoed Hanna Shelest, a researcher at the National Institute for Strategic Studies, whom I met in the Black Sea port of Odessa. She told me that she wanted Ukraine to sign the deal because “it is a question of self-identification. Sometimes we don’t feel ourselves European but what is worse is when Europeans don’t see us as European.” Andrey Stavnitser, a businessman who runs a dry cargo terminal near Odessa, told me he was hoping that if the deal was signed, the application of EU standards would begin to curb corruption. “For my business,” he added, “it would be better to enter the customs union,” because he could then expect more Russian cargoes, but “as a citizen,” he said “I would vote for the EU.” As to a relationship dominated by Russia, he said, “I would not go there again.”

Among ordinary people there was more ambivalence about the deal, although the polls favor it. A big reason for this was that what was at stake and how the EU deals or the customs union would actually affect people’s lives were rarely explained properly. Indeed, the Russian-funded media in Ukraine had, said Shelest, even given people the impression that if they chose Russia over the EU, “then everything will be cheaper, such as gas, and that if we go toward the EU, normal marriages will not exist, only gay marriages.” Russia, she said, was presenting itself as “the big brother who will tell us what to do,” and a pro-Russian choice would mean “we will live happily ever after and won’t have to read that complicated EU agreement.”

There's so much there--the fear of being relegated to Asia ("You cannot move Romania into Africa.") whatever Asia means in the Ukrainian mind, and at the same time, a fear of modernism represented by the recognition of the right of gay human beings to form families. And then finally a desire for a dictator to simply tell people what to do.

In procedure and in content the laws “passed” by the Ukrainian parliament this week contravene the most basic rights of modern constitutional democracies: to speech, assembly, and representation. Although they concern the most basic aspects of political life, and transform the constitutional structure of the Ukrainian state, these measures were not subjected to even the barest of parliamentary procedures. There were no public hearings, there was no debate in parliament, and there was no actual vote. There was a show of hands in parliament and an estimate of how many hands were raised. The standard electronic voting system, which creates an official record, was not used.

The deputies—those who apparently raised their hands—have all but voted themselves out of existence. If the deputies from Yanukovych’s Party of Regions read the legislation, which according to Ukrainian reports they did not, they would realize that their own positions are now under threat. Their parliamentary immunity is now no longer guaranteed, which means that if they vote the wrong way they can be stripped of immunity and prosecuted. Yanukovych’s main political rival, Julia Tymoshenko, is in prison. Her defense lawyer has already been stripped of his parliamentary mandate.

Speaking at all about the Tymoshenko case will now be risky. Actions deemed to “interfere with the work of courts” have been banned. Making remarks of an “offensive” nature about judges is illegal. It seems unlikely that truth will be a defense. It is true, for example, that the new president of the highest Ukrainian court was once in charge of the court that misplaced documents about President Yanukovych’s earlier criminal convictions for rape and robbery. But that seems like exactly the thing that people will no longer be allowed to say. As far as Yanukovych’s own record is concerned, the new legislation’s vaguely worded ban on “slander” will presumably be used to criminalize unfriendly references to the president.

Democracy is such a fragile project--more a continuing series of actions, then a state.

More soon. I've just started reading Anne Applebaum's The Iron Curtain. She begins with Stalin crushing the instruments of society in Poland, Hungary and the old GDR. I can tell there are lots of bright days ahead on this blog. As I said, more soon.

*As a sidenote, a comment on that page reads "Russians have killed 10 million of us, jews have tried to take us over, the polish killed us too. but we they have not succedded. ukraine be free!!!!" A foot on the neck is never an ennobling experience.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.